The Very Daring Duchess Part 10

"Nothing of real value was lost, my lady," said Francesca, belatedly remembering to untie her ap.r.o.n and whisk it from sight behind a carved panel of Bacchus. Twice now she'd been caught looking more like a peasant's wife than the artistic sultana that she'd wished to appear to be, and the last time, with Edward Ramsden, had-but no, she couldn't think of that now.

"A bit of sweeping, my lady," she said hurriedly, reaching out to straighten one of the paintings, "and a bit of rearranging, and everything's set back to rights."

"And so it is," said her ladyship cheerfully, the white plume in her hat bobbing over one eye. "Though now I do not wonder that you've forgotten to bring me my drawing."

Francesca gasped, her cheeks hot with embarra.s.sment. "Oh, my lady, mi scusi, I am so very sorry! However could I have forgotten? To be sure, it is with the framer-and such a cunning frame, my lady, you will be most pleased by-"

"Hush, hush, little Robin, it matters not," said Lady Hamilton, chuckling as she squeezed Francesca's hand. "You've far more important things to consider. Which is truly why I've come to you, to wish you well upon your journey."

"My journey?" Francesca drew herself straighter, trying to keep her smile in place. "I am sorry to disagree, my lady, but I'm not leaving Naples."

Lady Hamilton frowned. "But clearly you are packing, and I heard from Captain Peters himself that you'd come to call upon him to make arrangements."

"I did make arrangements with Captain Peters, yes," said Francesca, swallowing her frustration as she slipped her hands free of her ladyship's. "He agreed to carry my belongings to London in his hold, but he'd no place between his decks for me to sail as well."

"No place!" exclaimed her ladyship indignantly. "Why, I told Captain Peters of your need! I was most specific, too, on account of how the amba.s.sador and I could do nothing for you ourselves. Most specific."

Francesca flushed again, this time with mingled resentment and shame. "Perhaps you were too specific, my lady. Captain Peters told me that on account of the distressing news from the north, he'd granted all his cabin s.p.a.ce to true English pa.s.sengers, and he'd no room to spare for anyone who wasn't."

Her ladyship gasped, one hand arched over the spray of diamonds in disbelief. "But he has no right to turn you away like that!"

"He says he has every right, my lady," answered Francesca. Her conversation with Captain Peters in his cabin had been thoroughly humiliating, with him using far worse language than she'd repeat now. Only her pride had managed to see her through it, though if she'd begged and groveled, he might have found a s.p.a.ce for her after all. "He said he'd leave it to Admiral Nelson and the rest of the navy to rescue the Italian rascals, for he'd not risk his own soul to do it himself."

Now it was Lady Hamilton who blushed, mortified. "I cannot believe he'd dare say that to you, to refuse you pa.s.sage because of your being Neapolitan!"

"Half Neapolitan," said Francesca softly, "and half English. Che miracolo!"

A miracle, and one that Francesca noted her ladyship wasn't about to address, either.

"For Captain Peters to speak of the dear Admiral in such a way, especially when he is trying so very hard to do the proper thing, is vastly unfair and unkind," she said indignantly. "He and Sir William and I have been toiling day and night-day and night!-to make certain that everyone at court will be properly sheltered, and that is not to mention all the English who've been foolish enough to be caught here. It is not right for Captain Peters to speak so, and not fair in the least!"

Already Francesca knew what wasn't fair or right, and yet she couldn't help herself from making certain. "But Captain Peters was correct to say that the English navy will grant pa.s.sage to King Ferdinando and his people?"

"Well, yes. Yes," said her ladyship, frowning a bit as she smoothed the plume on her hat. "If it becomes necessary, the navy will accommodate their royal majesties and all their n.o.bles, even though the Admiral grumbles that it will be a righteous tight fit on board. But we'd hardly leave them behind to be slaughtered by the French, would we? Not that we wish it to be known, of course, on account of the common people panicking and expecting to be rescued, too."

"Of course," echoed Francesca, her voice turning brittle. "How dare we common people have such expectations, eh?"

To keep yourself safe, la.s.s...

"Oh, my dear little Robin, I didn't mean you!" cried her ladyship contritely. "That is, you're not at all common, but now you understand why I am so cross with Captain Peters."

"Thank you, my lady," said Francesca, holding her head high, "but I shall manage. Surely in this harbor there must be some shipmaster who will not scorn me or my pa.s.sage-fare. Or perhaps I shall stay after all, and simply add portraits of this General Napoleon to my wall, yes?"

"Forgive me, Miss Robin, please," said her ladyship, reaching out to rest her hand on Francesca's arm.

But Francesca pulled away. She would be strong, she would be brave, and she would do it on her own, the way she always did. She would be strong. She must depend only on herself, and forget the help that would not come from others.

"There is nothing to forgive, my lady. I am doing exactly as you suggested, sending my belongings to my uncle in London for safekeeping. Though we have never met, I believe he should make a better caretaker for Papa's things than the French."

"My dearest little Robin, I beg you-"

"That is a most unusual brooch you are wearing, my lady," said Francesca, willing the tremor from her voice just as she was trying to will the conversation to fresh topics. "Bellissima! A gift from the amba.s.sador, no doubt?"

Absently her ladyship shook her head as she fingered the diamond pin. "Rather a gift from the queen. It belonged to her sister first, you know, sad little Marie Antoinette, which makes it doubly dear to me now."

"Her Majesty gave that to you?" asked Francesca, startled. It was a handsome piece, worth at least a queen's ransom, a swirl like a feather with the largest stones set en tremblant, dangling on wires to catch the light, and any other day Francesca would have admired it honestly. But now she saw the brooch only as a symbol of Queen Maria Carolina's farewell, and how few days Francesca herself might have left to make plans.

"A small token, yes, a sort of keepsake," said her ladyship vaguely, clearly thinking as she looked past Francesca to the half-packed crates on the floor. "Just as the brooch was first given to her from her sister. Are you sending your papa's wicked paintings to London, too?"

"The Oculus Amorandi?" She certainly hadn't expected her ladyship to ask after that. "They were my father's most famous paintings. I'd never risk losing them, though G.o.d only knows what Londoners will make of such pictures."

Her ladyship smiled. "They will make the same of them in London as they do here in Naples. Come, show them to me, little Robin, and let me judge for myself. It might well be my last chance."

"Are you certain, my lady?" asked Francesca doubtfully. No other lady, let alone the wife of the English amba.s.sador, had ever asked to view the Oculus, and while she wasn't shy around the paintings herself, she did wonder what her ladyship's reaction would be. "The paintings were not prepared to please a lady's refined taste."

"And there'd be plenty who'd say I'm no lady," said her ladyship, laughing. "Now pray show me this lewd marvel before I perish of curiosity."

Resigned, Francesca ushered the other woman from the studio and across the hall. It wouldn't be her fault if her ladyship was shocked, and besides, since everything else in her life seemed so topsy-turvy, why not this as well?

The paintings were kept in a small windowless room-Papa had always told visitors that this was to preserve the "delicate historical condition" of the paintings-and shown by the light of the lanterns along the wall that Francesca now lit. That the darkened room had also served to increase the antic.i.p.ation of viewing the paintings and to enhance their forbidden quality were things Papa had explained only to her, chuckling gleefully as he'd described how the flickering lantern light could make impressionable young gentlemen swear they'd seen the painted figures move.

"The Oculus Amorandi is a most rare and important work, after the antique, my lady," began Francesca solemnly, reciting the same introduction she'd spoken countless times before. There were sixteen small paintings in gold frames to explain in detail, all the better to allow the visitor the proper time for unabashed viewing. "By special arrangement, my late father was permitted to attend the excavations of the lost city of Pompeii. He made these paintings after the murals of the most notorious brothel of the ancient world, murals that were regarded as so inciting, shocking, so depraved, that they were ordered destroyed for the sake of-"

"That's completely untrue," interrupted her ladyship cheerfully, bending close to inspect the first painting. "Nothing like this ever existed in Pompeii, let alone was destroyed, for Sir William would have told me."

"My lady!" exclaimed Francesca, stunned. Not only was Lady Hamilton the first lady to view the paintings, she was also the first person, male or female, to question their authenticity. Of course knowing she was right was entirely incidental. "If you asked to view the Oculus only to mock the paintings-"

"Oh, hush, little Robin," scolded her ladyship as she settled on the viewing bench, "and stop defending your father's gift for cleverness. Considering how he must have invented these pictures out of his own head, he made a most amusing job of it."

"You are certainly ent.i.tled to your opinion, my lady, but if others began to doubt the verisimilitude of-"

"Oh, my dear, don't protest upon my account," said her ladyship with the same good-natured cheerfulness. "Long, long ago, when I was still a green la.s.s fresh from the country without any gentleman-friends, I posed as the G.o.ddess Hygeia at Dr. Graham's Temple of Aesculapius in London, dressed only in a sc.r.a.p or two of white linen while gentlemen gawked and told themselves they were being 'educated.' What you have here is no better nor worse, though I will grant that with these pictures in your possession to keep you in sixpence and shillings, you need never fear starving in London. These, and the best of your father's collection. Englishmen will gawk at anything novel, as long as they can tell themselves it's edifying."

"Yes, my lady," said Francesca faintly, striving to digest all that her ladyship had confided. If she could support herself in London by showing paintings, then she could stop the forgeries and concentrate on her own work, a glorious, glorious possibility. "That is, I trust you are right, my lady."

"Oh, I am, I am," said her ladyship shrewdly, glancing at her shoulder back at Francesca. "And what did dear Captain Ramsden make of these pictures when you showed them to him?"

Francesca blushed, something she thought she'd never do around the Oculus. "Captain Lord Ramsden did not wish to see them, my lady. I offered, but he declined."

"How very surprising!" He ladyship twisted her mouth in wry disbelief. "He is a sea-going man, and in my experience they are the most amorous and randy creatures alive. I thought surely he'd seen your pictures when he offered to return your shawl. Perhaps he was even hoping for the two of you to enact some of these pretty little scenes between yourselves."

Automatically Francesca's gaze shot back to the paintings, to the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses who'd been enthusiastically frolicking together as long as she could remember. She'd always found their antics not so much arousing as peculiar and foolish, especially the gleeful smiles in spite of the peculiar postures.

For Francesca, there'd been no girlish fantasies of love, no romantic pining after the boys she saw in the market or the arrogant young foreigners who came to the studio. How could it be otherwise, with such pictures at home to keep from romanticising the facts? When Papa had made her swear to dedicate herself to her painting instead of to a husband or lover, it had been the easiest promise in the world to make.

So why, then, when she looked back at the familiar paintings, did she think of Edward Ramsden?

He bore absolutely no resemblance to the licentious ancient revelers. Not in his looks, of course-he was as broad-shouldered and golden-haired as any G.o.d from Olympus-but in his manner. He was too steadfast, too orderly.